The Truth About Better Decision-Making (Collection), 2/e

Truth 19. We listen with our eyes

Have you ever sat in on a presentation where the speaker's message became lost due to his fidgeting posture, soft monotone, or lack of eye contact? The good news is that you need not make the same mistake.

In his book Silent Messages, Dr. Albert Mehrabian divides human communication skills into three areas that we must be cognizant of: verbals, vocals, and nonverbals. For communication to be most effective and efficient, there must be congruence across these factors as heard and observed by your audience.

Verbals

Intuition might lead you to believe that our spoken words, our verbals, are of most influence when it comes to conveying our point of view; after all, our language reflects our upbringing, education, ...